Our Take On Moz’s Whiteboard Friday – SEO Strategy for 2017

One of our favorite video series here at Akers Digital is Moz’s Whiteboard Friday. The founder of Moz, Rand Fishkin, gives out so many nuggets of wisdom in these videos that it is worth adding them to your RSS reader. In his New Year edition, Rand talks about what goes into a plan for SEO in 2017. Here are some highlights and my thoughts on his advice.

Understand Search Trends

What are the major search trends going to be in 2017? Rand listed a total of 11 trends to keep an eye on. The major highlights for me were the increasing importance of SERP Features. Google is placing a greater emphasis on SERP Features adding more of them and using them more frequently. Additionally, as voice services increase (think Alexa, Google Home, and so forth). So how do you get SERP Features? Think JSON-LD.

Another trend mention was an increased focus on UX. This shouldn’t be anything new for marketers. Think site speed, navigation, and mobile first. But more importantly, think content. Build pages around your users intent and their goals. Ensure you are meeting their needs so you can guide them down the conversion funnel.

Craft Tactics & Map Goals

One of the mistakes I see agencies and brands make over and over again is failing to map efforts back to goals and those goals back to business objectives. If you can’t show that our actions are driving results, then we are spinning our wheels. An excellent framework for tactics and goal mapping is Avinash Kaushik’s Digital Marketing & Measurement Model or DMMM for short.

This model was the first thing to come to mind during Rand’s whiteboard session. Give Avinash’s article a read and create one specifically for SEO. While you’re at it plug all of your other marketing channels into the model, you won’t be disappointed.

Build a Keyword To content map

This is easier said than done because it could mean a pretty drastic overhaul of your website structure if you have never done this before. The goal here is to avoid having two pages on your site competing for the same keyword. Do your keyword research, identify landing pages and entry points, and align your content and website structure to match. Often a side effect of doing this is simplifying your website architecture.

Map Projects

Rand put a lot of emphasis on this, and we are glad that he did! You know what you need to do how are you going to execute it? What are timeframes and deliverables? Build your action plan for the year. This step is often overlooked and is one of the most important pieces as it creates accountability.

Develop Reporting & Measurement Models

Go re-read Avinash’s DMMM article. Combine your DMMM with your project plan. Know what your goals are, what success means to you, and how you are going to measure progress towards those goals. Simply saying “improving SEO” isn’t good enough. Know what your specific objective is, how you are going to achieve it, and how you are going to measure and show the success.

Rand goes into further detail of his four steps which I listed above in his video. If you’ve not watched his video yet set aside 10 minutes of your day and give it a view. What were your major takeaways from his videos? How are you going to succeed at SEO in 2017? Leave a comment and let me know.